Advocates say Perry veto hit Asians hardest

Amid the deluge of vetoes issued Friday by Gov. Rick Perry is one that has voting rights advocates scratching their heads: The governor snubbed out a proposal with strong bipartisan support aimed at making it easier for bilingual interpreters to help at the ballot box.

Senate Bill 722 by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, would have allowed voters who can’t communicate with poll workers to select an interpreter of their choice when casting a ballot — undoing current law that requires a language translator at the polls to be a registered voter. The proposal would also have given county election officials more flexibility when hiring interpreters by allowing them to tap an interpreter from an adjoining county.

The bill is now toast courtesy of Perry’s veto pen — a move that the bill’s supporters say is going to have the most impact on the state’s Asian-American population.

“In the state of Texas we have a lot of people who speak Spanish,” said Sondra Haltom, president of Empower the Vote Texas. “It is much more difficult for people to find an interpreter who can read and speak Vietnamese or Mandarin.”

Haltom noted this is an especially big deal for folks in Harris County, where Asians make up anywhere from six to eight percent of the population.

SB 722 sailed out of the Senate with a 26-4 vote and then breezed through the House on a 142-6 tally. The head of the Republican County Chairs Association was the sole witness to testify against the bill during committee hearings, according to online records.

“The current system provides appropriate safeguards and ensures the integrity of our election system,” Perry said in his veto statement. “This system should be retained.”

Perry went on to add that SB 722 would have allowed election officials to select the interpreter, “thus subjecting the voter to someone with whom they are not familiar.” And Perry said the bill would have opened the door to “undue influence” in the case of a school bond election, where an “administrator or other person with authority over likely voters is allowed to be present at the polls.”

This rationale, Haltom said, is a gross misunderstanding of the bill. Voters, she said, would have retained the option of using an election authority’s translator or their own interpreter — the measure simply removed the voter registration requirement.

“This was a practical, common-sense bill,” she said. “Everyone else seemed to understand the problem that was being addressed.”